The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

Page 5

Lords of Misrule 2023: Pedestrian Diversions

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Iō Saturnalia! Today’s post comes from an anonymous reader in Santiago — to comment, please visit its page on the main site.

as a kid coming down the portway into the harbourside through here was always so epic: going past the rugby club, along the seamills bridge, down the hill, past the willow whale, seeing climbers on the gorge, the tunnels randomly sticking out the cliff looking like something out of minecraft, then coming around the bend and seeing the absolutely massive iconic bridge so high up. diving into the short tunnel type thing and then being greeted with an truly odd mix of architecture being the announcement of entering the city so dramatically. first ashton gate sticks out slightly, and then driving past the first row of house (the last one before the turn has a waving flag of the spanish republican international brigades — always fun for us, i am from spain but grew up in the middle of farmyland severn vale — we always came down via the m5 and even there i remember the giraffe cranes at avonmouth and the hovis silos), then being greeted with these brutalist tendales towards the airport, but we would always come off and into the redeveloped harbourside of its modern style and parked in the (very expensive im told) millenium square car park. the short drive through hotwells road was always very strange to me because its old georgian and victorian housing sandwiched between two far more modern areas. the nautical theme with the absolutely massive victorian ss great britain is also great, it used to have even more colourful flags !

the trip back was still good but never as cool as that experience, just a bunch of huge weed-themed graffiti on the quarryfaces across the river. will probably look much cooler if the train ever comes back that side.

The Satyrs’ Forest’s 2023 word of the year

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It’s that time of year again for the dictionaries of the world to come remind people that they still exist, and that there is absolutely, definitely a reason for anyone to ever pay for them instead of going on Wiktionary for free1, by proclaiming a singular lemma to be Word Of The Year™.

They’re not usually very good at it. Irritatingly often they plump for words that were around for hundreds of years before that year, slang terms that won’t be around in five years, let alone fifty, or terms with dubious status as words at all. That is why last year, as chief etymologist and steward of this noble wood, i picked my own — “special military operation”. In hindsight, i might have chosen something less dour, but that’s the way the biscuit breaks.

So then, how can you capture the essence of the year that was 2023 in a single word? It has been a year of political stagnation, social carrying-on-per-usual, but of technological upheaval. Merriam-Webster thought authentic summed it up best, as a counter to industry plants and GPT malaise… but i’m sorry, that’s bollocks and they know it. Not a word from 2023, been around for decades, go straight to gaol, do not pass go.

Oxford, on the other hand, had a rather different, more vernacular choice — one i am inclined to agree with. The word of the year for 2023 is:

rizz

noun. (colloquial) Effortless charisma, the sort that lets you win friends, influence people, and get the girls.

I’ll admit, it’s not quite a 2023 word. It first gained steam in late 2022, and was popularised by the streamer Kai Cenat all the way back in 2021 — but to hell with it! The first mention in my group chat is January of this year, and it has taken the youth by storm in such a way that it seems destined to stick around, even if only to call back to the twenties the way radical might the nineties or groovy the sixties.

It too captures Merriam-Webster’s reaction to the plastic sheen of modern technology. Your friends might have rizz. The people you follow online might have rizz. But ChatGPT? I’m sorry, Dave, but as a large language model, it is not possible for me to have rizz.

Merry rizzmas, everyone, and a happy new year — let’s hope 2024’s word is as undour as this one!

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXV

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Lords of Misrule 2023 — let the misrule begin!

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It’s been a long year. That’s the traditional thing to say, but honestly, it’s been quite a short year for me, and autumn has crept up without me even noticing. That can only mean one thing…

Io Saturnalia!

It’s time, once again, for our third annual Satyrs’ Forest Lords of Misrule, where in the spirit of the season, i put you (yes, you) in charge of the site.

If you write or put togeher something — absolutely anything* — and email it to misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (December 17 to 23, for those who aren’t up to date on their Roman calendar) i’ll put it up on the site, on the blog and on its own dedicated permanent subpage, etched in stone for all to see.

As in years past, i ask only that you refrain from political polemics and anything that would get this noble forest in legal trouble. Other than that, the sky is the limit. A video essay on the occult implications of Gremlins 2? A rant about that new skyscraper that blots out the view of your favourite billboard? Anything goes. Whatever you — my lords of misrule — want.

You can submit your entries from today until the 16th of December, 2023. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to get weird with it!

— Xanthe

A dispatch from Barnard Castle

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A shot looking up at an old Georgian palace with glass trees in the foreground

Hello. I’ve been to the Bowes Museum. I thought i might tell you about it.

Housed in a gloriously incongruous French mansion in the small town of Barnard Castle1, it was built to house the art collections of the noble Bowes-Lyons — a family lucky enough to count the Queen Mother herself among their members.

Its collection lies largely parallel to the “main” visual arts: ceramics, fashion, textiles, furniture, and other such things which must account for function as much as form. Most of it plunges headfirst into the latter, a bit frilly even for my often anti-modernist tastes, but i did like this caduceus-adorned wooden cabinet:

A dark wooden cabinet whose middle is adorned with a beautiful embossed caduceus

The star of the show here is the Silver Swan, a gorgeous eighteenth-century automaton which preens and sways on a bed of glass water. Unfortunately, it’s broken, and the closest you’ll get to see it is its dismembered corpse awaiting restoration, so [raspberry noise]. You can, however, see their exhibition on its legacy, which houses a wonderful collection of modern animatronics made by crafters and tinkerers from all over the world, like this 10/10 pianist:

There are a few items which don’t fit into the above. They’ve managed to snag some real Goyas, Canalettos, and El Grecos. (Los Grecos?) They even have Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, somehow — i assume it’s on loan from London?

Information for visitors

  • Admission: ÂŁ15.50 for an annual membership; ÂŁ13.50 for locals — don’t be fooled by the eye-watering ÂŁ18 day ticket for shmucks!
  • Address: The Bowes Museum, Newgate, Barnard Castle, DL12 8NP
  • Accessibility: The museum has an accessible entrance and a lift serving all three floors.
  • Getting there: Bus network’s fucked at the minute. Sorry.

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XXIV

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A decorative frontispiece for a Victorian book of “curvilinear” designs

De Sledge­hammer­projectie

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Een oppervlaktegetrouwe kaart van de landen van de wereld, met een gebogen rand die zachtjes naar de polen toe buigt

Deze pagina berust op chique nieuwe functies in HTML, dus werkt mogelijk niet op uw browser. Sorry.

De Sledge­hammer­projectie — vernoemd naar het Peter Gabriel-lied — is een nieuwe opper­vlakte­getrouwe kaart­projectie in dezelfde niche als de Winkel-tripel. Een samenstelling van de projecties van Hammer en Peters behoudt oppervlakte, geeft aantrekkelijke curven aan zowel meridianen als parallellen, en haar puntige polen vervormen verre noordelijke regio’s veel minder dan haar afgeplatte equivalenten. (Ik durf wel te zeggen dat zelfs de Antarctis er goed genoeg uitziet!)

De precieze formule, afgeleid van het techniek Strebe (2017):1

  • Sledge(λ,φ)=p(h′[12⋅h(λ,φ)]), waar
    • h(λ,φ) naar de Hammerprojectie2 verwijst,
    • h′(x,y) naar haar inverse3 verwijst, en
    • p(λ,φ)=(89⋅3πλ,43sinφ)

De inverse:

Sledge′(x,y)=h′(2⋅h[98⋅π3x,asin(34y)])

En eindelijk een formule voor de buitenrand van de kaart:

tan2(316πx)=3-3y2

U kunt hier een interactieve versie finden.

The Sledgehammer projection

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An equal-area map of the countries of the world, with a curved outline curving in gently towards the poles

This post relies on some spiffy new browser features, and might not work on your machine. Apologies.

The Sledgehammer projection — named after the Peter Gabriel song — is a novel equal-area map projection designed to fill the same niche as the Winkel Tripel. A composite of the Hammer and Peters projections, it preserves area, gives both parallels and meridians pleasing curves, and with its pointed poles, it does not distort areas in far northern latitudes to the extent that flat-topped projections such as Equal Earth do. (I dare even say that it handles Antarctica alright.)

The exact formula, based on Strebe (2017)’s technique:1

  • Sledge(λ,φ)=p(h′[12⋅h(λ,φ)]), where
    • h(λ,φ) refers to the Hammer projection2,
    • h′(x,y) refers to its inverse3, and
    • p(λ,φ)=(89⋅3πλ,43sinφ)

To invert:

Sledge′(x,y)=h′(2⋅h[98⋅π3x,asin(34y)])

And, finally, an equation describing the outer boundary of the map:

tan2(316πx)=3-3y2

An interactive version is available here. Happy mapping!

</hiatus>

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Welcome back, ladies and gentlefolk! I’ve been trapped labouring in a Colombian salt mine for the past four months, but after a daring escape which my lawyers have advised me not to speak of, i’ve returned to safety to provide you all with yet more content®™.

Some links i’ve had sitting around gathering mothballs to start you off: